Campaign Mastery

Why should the GM care about Marching Order? After all, it’s purely in the hands of the players what order their characters are in. Well, as usual, it’s not quite that simple. First, if you can anticipate the marching order, you can plan encounters either to take advantage of it, or to share the spotlight […]

Campaign Mastery hosted the November 2017 Blog Carnival and had some really great submissions in addition to my using the Carnival as a springboard for a whole heap of articles. The theme this time around was “The Past Revisited: Pick a post (your own or someone else’s) and write a sequel. Should include a link […]

While this article builds on some others that I’ve done here at Campaign Mastery, I didn’t feel it was enough of a sequel to any of them to qualify for the Blog Carnival. But I wanted to remind readers that if you’re thinking of doing so, there’s still time to submit a late entry! I’ll […]

I’m listing this as an entry in the Blog Carnival because it builds on several past articles about villains and villainy. See: The Anatomy Of Evil: What Makes a Good Villain? Shadows In The Darkness – The nature of True Evil Making a Great Villain Part 1 of 3 – The Mastermind Making a Great […]

I’ve been thinking about Influences, Styles, Trends and Oscillations. It started when I was thinking about Nostalgia and the “death” of Disco and its subsequent morphing into “Electronic Dance Music” in the very early 80s. All fads and styles have a natural lifetime; the length varies, but at the conclusion, they are clearly recognized as […]

When first I listed this article as a to-do, it represented a very straightforward concept, but I’ve taken so long to get around to writing it that other notions have presented themselves. I now find myself in possession of three distinct and – at first glance – mutually contradictory ideas on the subject. With these […]

I’m tagging this post as part of the Blog Carnival. The theme is sequels, and I think that being the third part in a series qualifies. The first two parts of this small series (Part 1, Part 2) looked at the tremendous impact of a community being located close to the major social, political, and […]

This isn’t the post I expected to put up today. The other one’s ready, and will appear later in the week. The reason is because it’s almost November – and that has a significance that will become clear any second now… Once again it’s time for Campaign Mastery to host the Blog Carnival for the […]

A side-comment by one of the players in my Zenith-3 campaign the last time we played raised some interesting questions. The player was speculating that the solution to a side-mystery that the PCs are currently investigating might have repercussions beyond those the players were presently aware of, simply to cause trouble between political authorities and […]

You can never tell where your next inspiration is coming from. Today’s article was founded upon an interview with a group of multimedia performers who combine original music with puppetry and performance that dated back to a few weeks ago. I didn’t see the whole thing, so I’m not even sure what show it was; […]

Introductory Recap This is the third post on the development of a bespoke game system for use in my latest campaign, which is now scheduled to start play on October 21st – so finishing this has become a priority. Let’s start with a recap. A couple of minor details that weren’t properly explained the first […]

The Elephant In The Gray Room is a metaphor that I have created to represent Plot Holes. These are matters of huge significance or importance that everyone is overlooking because they are not immediately obvious, but that once you see one, you can never forget that it’s there. This is a series about methods of […]